Title: The Halloween TreeAuthor: Kat LeeFandom: LabyrinthCharacter/Pairing: Jareth/Sarah, EnsembleRating: G/KWarning(s): AUWord Count: 1,131Date Written: 29 September 2017Summary: Disclaimer:All characters within belong to Henson, not the author, and are used without permission.

The Queen looks up as high-pitched grunts and groans penetrate the castle’s corridors. Ludo throws his shaggy head back and begins to howl. “Ludo!” she reprimands. “Don’t call the rocks!”

Ludo lowers his big heads, his ears flopping as he does so, and looks down at her in confusion. “But, Sarah,” he says in his slow, deep voice, “friends need help.”

“Friends need help with what?” Sarah questions, frowning. “All I asked them to do was to bring up a few decorations for the holiday!” Realizing what that could entail to little, Goblin minds, she casts a horrified look toward the corridor where she can clearly hear them dragging something. “Oh, Lord!”

“Uh huh,” Hoggle says beside her.

“There’s no telling what they could be bringing!”

She moves to go to them, but at just that time, the top, spiky branches of a tree thrust into the throne room. Sarah blinks and looks again, wide-eyed.

Sarah watches, in growing shock, as the Goblins push, pull, and prod until the tree completely emerges into the throne room. “What,” she asks slowly, looking at the head Goblin who’s directing everything, “is this?”

“What’s it look like?” Hoggle asks, barely refraining the smirking grin that wants to bust out over his craggy mouth.

Sarah slaps her own forehead rather than reach out and strike one of the Goblins as her husband would undoubtedly do. She had asked them to bring holiday decorations. She had been the one who had messed everything up by not specifying which decorations they should bring. “Hum, guys,” she says as gently as she can, “thanks for all this, but -- “

Heads pop out of the tree. Tiny, green faces look eagerly up at her. A few frown in apprehension. “I told you numbskulls we were bringing the wrong thing!” Trely snaps.

“SILENCE!” Jareth roars. He strides into the mass of Goblins fighting one another and begins to kick this way and that. Each kick sends another Goblin flying through the air and out of the palace until, finally, the few left use the tree for cover. They shake so mightily that the entire tree quivers with their fright.

“My dearest,” Sarah says, approaching Jareth, “isn’t there another way to stop their misbehavior?”

“They do, darling, just not like ours. Besides,” she says, turning to the tree and examining it again, “I’m beginning to think they may have had a good idea.” The tree’s once green stems have turned black -- from what exactly, Sarah doesn’t want to know, but it gives the tree an entirely different air.

Goblin heads once again pop out of various places on the tree. “Really, Queenie?” one asks.

Sarah barely manages to bite back her revulsion of that nickname. “Yes,” she says, nodding and raking her eyes up and down the tree’s lengths. “We could have a Halloween tree -- “

“And deck it with their bones,” Jareth snarls, but the Goblins, knowing that they’re safe as long as Sarah is near, ignore their King. Instead, working together, they pick up the tree, bring it into the center of the throne room, and hoist it up.

Rocks, heeding Ludo’s call, arrive just then. They form a base underneath the tree and keep it standing. Fire crackles somewhere in the near vicinity. “Hey, groovy chick,” a Fiery calls, “we heard there’s a party going on! Ooo! Yeah, dude! A black tree! Come on! Come on!” The Fiery’s leader waves his friends into the throne room. He lets his wrist fly and perch in the tree’s top branches.

Soon, the room is once again filled with both Goblins and Fieries. Goblins scurry along the tree branches while the Fieries toss various body parts at the tree, clearly competing to see what body part from whom will get to top the tree. Jareth sighs, rolls his eyes, shakes his head, and pinches his temples lightly with his gloved fingers. “You would have to get them started on this,” he mutters wearily.

“Of course,” Sarah replies brightly. Her arms surround him, and the King instantly feels a weight being lifted from him. He looks up and into her beautiful eyes. “All the best holidays,” Sarah explains, “are about being with family.”

“These things -- “

“Are your family,” she tells him, “like it or not, and by association, they’re my family too.” She crinkles her nose the way she knows he likes, hugs him a little tighter, and shrugs, “Besides, I kind of like having them here. It keeps things . . . interesting.”

“There is never a dull moment,” he agrees dryly, “with Goblins in the palace.”

“Precisely. Or a King in your heart.” She kisses him as the Fieries cheer for Sir Didymus’ plastic crown has landed on top of the tree. Her kiss, as it always has, makes him forget his righteous anger. It is going to be a happy Halloween; after all, every day is happy with her in his arms.